What A Pain In The Ass!

There Ought To Be A Law...

Flying With Your Damned "Baby On Board" Is Unfair To The Rest Of Us And Should Be Banned... 
Or Something!

Dearest Bloggymathingy,

I already know I'll catch hell from the various doting mummies and daddies about this topic, insisting that their little darlings are oh-so-cutesy-wutesy and would never disturb anyone, coochy-coochy-coo-oh-s/he's soooo adorable! Gag.

Why is it that airlines are still stupid and have not figured out that they need to address the problem of squawling, mewling horrible bratty babies in the economy section keeping all the rest of us who either cannot afford or don't want to be taken to the cleaners for an overpriced, slightly wider seat aboard the same aircraft?

This problem has bugged me for years, since I used to and am again flying for work or pleasure on long-haul aircraft over many hours dumped in with umpteen of this little disease-factories whose irresponsible parents use them as the excuse of the century to justify their selfish behavior and attempts to get extra frills for nothing at the expense of the rest of us! 

It's time for a revolution! Singles, Retirees, Businesspeople on Budgets, and those who just plain hate babies - UNITE!

We need to stand up and fight for our rights! Ban babies on board!

What brings on this latest diatribe, you ask?

Ah, let me tell you, grasshopper! Recently I had the extreme displeasure of flying to the U.S. from South Africa. Leg 1 of the trip was aboard South Africa's pride and joy, the state-owned and hum-drum to poor South African Airways. Service was at best mediocre, the food was okay, the seat pitch (okay, distance between rows for those not in the industry) was torture in economy and generally conditions on board the gleaming silver tube hurtling through the lower atmosphere could best be described as "sub-tolerable."

Well, it might have been a hair better on the 12-hour flight if I had not been (see picture above) surrounded by no less than eleven of the little monsters on the flight in question. As anyone knows, babies and small children under about age 10 are disease factories, and this flight was no exception. By the time we reached London, I was already running a low-grade temperature and feeling woozy, to say nothing of having had almost no sleep due to the ongoing all-night "chorus of waaahs" which surrounded me and subjected  me to all its glory in Dolby 2000+ surround sound. 

The next leg, a seven-hour flight from London's horrid Heathrow to Washington's superior Dulles International, was aboard United. They were kind enough to take pity on me and upgrade my ticket to Economy Plus, so at least the legroom problem went away, but did the mewling, irksome chorale atmosphere? No, of course not! Babies even here! Egad!

I landed in D.C. with a full-blown case of baby-borne, trapped in conditions surrounded by infantile germs flu. The first four days in the capital of the U.S.A. were spent in bed. What fun and thank you very much, you selfish individuals who must subject the rest of us innocent and healthy passengers to the germs generated by your offspring. I believe that these traveling wastrels do this on purpose to the rest of us - they are already so accustomed to never sleeping and constantly warding off colds and flus and other horrible baby-induced diseases that they get a real rise out of sharing their pathetic conditions with the rest of us unsuspecting innocent people who merely want to get from A to B as quickly and unscathed as possible.

Well, dear Blog, Mom always said that one should not just complain, but always suggest a way to fix a bad situation, so I've been busy in my invention laboratory and have come up with the solution!

Presenting: Baby Transporters!

Since airlines keep complaining they are all losing money, what with competition and volcanic clouds and greedy oil sheiks straining their budgets, I have come up with an idea of some sheer brilliance... if my clean, quiet, well-behaved adorable Labrador or Ridgeback can't ride in the cabin with me and has to go in the hold, then so should babies. Naturally, the holds will be pressurized and climate-controlled. Babies will have tubes inserted into their bottoms to dispose of all the toxic waste they generate during long trips (no diaper changing needed!) and feeding tubes into their mouths so they don't go without formula or that soft disgusting stuff that comes out as the aforementioned toxic waste.

As most airlines operate on a class-structure, and some people even insist on bringing their little darlings into Business or First class, I've designed two baby carriers for hold loading. The first is the Economy version, pictured at left.

Note the happy toddler in his safe haven, all ready for a nice trippy-wippy to wherever. Once the door shuts and the lights in the hold are dimmed and all that yummy Purity- or formula-goodness starts flowing through his feeding tube, he'll be in heaven, and so will Mumsy and Dadums and all the rest of us who will manage to arrive at our destination without the diseases caused by the little monsters and the lack of rest brought about by their incessant braying and brawling. Ah, what bliss for everyone aboard!

Now, of course those in Biz or First won't be able to stomach the model pictured above. After all, are their babies going to have to tolerate campinglike-conditions, what-what? And when they are already being ripped off by the airline to the tune of about 5 times the cost of some economy tickets? Never! Well, don't get your knickers in a twist, business-mommies and daddies! Yours truly has naturally considered your superior needs for your better-class babies. Behold, I present to you at right, the Upper Class Baby Transporter!

Doesn't little Miss Precious just look ecstatic in her secure, cozy trip box? Why, naturally it has a built-in night light, the food tubes only dispense premium organic (or, upon request your very own home-made, warmed to the perfect temperature) food! It also features built-in deluxe busy-toys and piped-in lullabyes to make sure your precious little one never realizes Mama and Dada are upstairs actually enjoying their own flight and getting some much-needed rest along with all the other delighted passengers and a much less-stressed crew. 

The upper class container you see above has another advantage over the economy model, too - they can be stacked up to three high, so there's no danger to upper class parents of twins or triplets getting the wrong baby/ies back at the end of a long flight. You see, the old Baron has truly considered and carefully weighed all the options!

Too Avant-Garde, As Usual!

Well, dear Blog, I know that usually people think my ideas are too outlandish or far-fetched, and I'm already aware that some of the aforementioned selfish Mummsies and Dadumses won't lie down and roll over and play dead and let the airlines introduce and make mandatory my brilliant, profit-making scheme. 

So naturally I've come up with a compromise solution which does not require the boxing and/or crating of those precocious, precious, luvvy-wuvvy little bundles of toxic waste, yet would still allow those of us travelling in Economy at least to avoid the germs, the noise and the discomfort they cause and possibly even get a good night's sleep! Best of all, it would cost nothing and could be implemented by any airline immediately and easily! Huzzah, panacea!

Introducing: Family Class

Yes, a revolutionary new concept whose time has come! Family Class! Anyone traveling with any child under, say, 14 (mandatory) and gladly up to (voluntarily and made oh-so-irresistible to most by cunning marketing campaigns) age 18 will automatically be booked into or required to buy Family Class tickets.

Family Class tickets mean that all those traveling in this mode have seats at the back of the aircraft, the way-back. That way, the rest of us still get to get off the plane ahead of them and not be inconvenienced when they spend hours looking for little Susie's binky or little Tommy's left shoe. And that way, the noise stays behind us, at the back, they're closer to the galley for all those pesky "warm the bottle" requests and closer to the rear lavs where they can take little darlings for hour long nappy-changes to their hearts' content without making the rest of us do the "gotta go, please hurry up"-shuffle. Another advantage that crafty marketeers could point out to those reluctant to cotton on to my new scheme is the common belief that the back of the plane is safest in a crash (which remains a completely unfounded misconception, but why rock the boat?).

Well, dear Blog, I must run now. I am completely exhausted from having spilled forth all this brilliance and must now go recuperate. I promise, in my next installment, to tell you the rest of the trip-story about Baron's travel adventures of most recently. Till then, nighty-night!

Just to let you know... (more South African observations and anomalies)

Dear Bloggy-ma-thingy,

Sorry I've been away a while again. Things have been busy at work at the Hill, what with droves of worker bees migrating to other, probably vastly friendlier hives. Even some of the drones are apparently getting ready to desert the Queen, and sometimes I wonder if I should not be out there scouting around for greener pastures...

Generally, though, life outside the hive has been quite pleasant. I seem to have finally settled into more or less what could be considered a routine, even if it is somewhat desperately dull, devoid of all romance, and definitely on the pathetically lonely side at times.  

For one, I have become relatively expert (notice: I did not use the word "addicted," and that for good reason) to locally produces "TV dramas," which will be one of the observations and anomalies referred to in the title to this entry today.

For another, I have given up my horribly bad internet connection at home, as the local internet cafe around the corner has been kind enough to offer me unlimited internet for R200 a month. While this has the disadvantage of meaning I no longer can go online 24/7, making playing Airline Online sadly impossible, it means it makes me get out among the people every day, which is probably responsible for my not becoming a total hermit and completely unbearable curmudgeon. I've gotten to know most of the staff at the cafe quite well and there are a few nascent friendships there, which is always a nice benefit...

And another pastime I've sort of developed is watching political developments in my erstwhile homeland. That - like the locally produced dramas (called "soapies" here) - is in and of itself, never a dull thing to be involved with. South Africa's political scene, while probably reported only in small doses or hardly at all, is wild and crazy...

My first observation about all of the local soapies is probably not a shocker, but definitely something which keys into the other area broached above. In every one of them, from Generations through Isidingo, Rhythm City, Scandal!, 7de Laan all the way to Muvhango, nearly all the truly evil, bad guys are white. True, in some of them, there are evil blacks and coloreds, too, but the main range of truly evil folk on these widely watched shows is nearly always white. The whites come up with the most corrupt, evil and sinister plot points, are the most foul when it comes to bad behavior, and are (at least in the case of 7de Laan) always the biggest gossips and busybodies around.  The range of acting, especially in 7de Laan, likewise, is also similarly awful.  Nonetheless, all of these shows are cult and camp at the same time and give rise to the preponderance that some of South Africa's genuine, real-life problems may come from everyone in the country being subjected to too much bad soapie script-writing and acting. That, in turn, may be the reason for political high-jinx and problems besetting the nation in real-time.

Racism, while officially not very much a topic in the "rainbow nation" Nelson Mandela proclaimed, is, nonetheless, a genuine and frequently unaddressed problem. Many of the policies put in place after 1994, when decades of the cruel, constitutionally-enshrined national policy of apartheid ended, were designed to bring black and coloreds - the two previously completely disenfranchised majority segments of the local population - up to speed as rapidly as possible. Sadly, in a vast majority of cases they have had the opposite effect, fanning further the flames of hatred, inequity and broadening the divide. [I should explain here, for the sake of Americans who might be reading you, dearest Blog, that coloreds and blacks are government parlance here, not some racial slur I'm incorporating. Blacks in South Africa are those people of black African descent, while coloreds are people of racially-mixed origins.]

Corruption, while in the early years of the new South Africa not a pronounced problem, has grown steadily, owing to a variety of reasons, not the least of which is these early policies that, instead of bringing a more equitable distribution of wealth to all as envisioned, has resulted in a very small handful of blacks and coloreds in power milking the system for all it is worth and enriching themselves to astronomical heights at the expense of a vast majority of the population. 

Part of this can be laid directly at the doorstep of the ANC, the ruling party, which established an investment arm called Chancellor House. That organization controls a majority stake in nearly every state-run business ranging from South African Airways, SABC, Sasol  (the state-run petroleum company) to Eskom and Telkom, the electricity company and telecommunications company, respectively.  While some aspects of each of these business sectors have been privatized, the bulk has not. Corruption in each of these businesses is rampant, and the result is a wild increase in poverty, marginalized citizens and residents and a furthering instead of a closing of the gap between haves and have-nots.

I can think of no other country, for example, where an electric company can propose (and then get approved by the country's utilities board) a rate hike of 100% spread over three years. The first "installment" of this outrageous hike took place on the first of the month, increasing electric power bills by an average of 33% to the entire population. It was approved, so the utilities board said, become the mismanaged Eskom had (during the preceding nearly 20 years of corruption and misgovernance) "become uncompetitive and fallen behind" in generation, distribution and production in general. That fact had led to massive brownouts in 2007 through early 2009, which the behemoth addressed not by ramping up production or building new plants, but by buying additional power at grossly overinflated prices from neighboring nations with excess production. Nevertheless, despite these problems, Eskom's board and directors were all paid, much like in many misled American companies, bonuses that were beyond understanding.

Eskom's excuse for these "problems" was that all the poor people living in "informal settlements" (more accurately called slums or barrios) were stealing so much power through illegal taps that the company was facing losses. Documentary programs, news interviews and word of mouth all exposed those excuses as fraudulent; indeed, while there is a connection problem with illegal taps in the "informal settlements" and theft is a problem, the real reason behind Eskom's woes is - simply stated - corruption and fraud. As the majority of the company is controlled via Chancellor House, there is no interest in doing what would come naturally at an American or German or British (or any other first-world) company - whether state-owned in part or entirely - which is firing the entire board and then divesting a majority or all operations.

And so the story goes for almost all state-owned companies here. While a part of each has been privatized (often during the apartheid era), the shares of each are nearly always securely in the hands of Chancellor House, the "investment arm" of ANC, which steadfastly refuses to disclose just how much of what it actually owns.

The result is, naturally, corruption at all levels of these businesses, and also in government. While South Africa may not rank among the most corrupt according to Transparency International and similar organizations that monitor the spread of fraudulent behavior at national levels, it is, as one local paper recently reported, poised at the brink of crossing the line of "no return."  

And the result, in turn of this national problem, which is not being dealt with despite promises to the contrary by current president Jacob Zuma, is a growing racial divide and polarization of South Africans. Of course, ZUma himself may not be the most shining example for someone to lead a battle against corruption. He was, from the outset, a controversial ANC candidate and his name was connected to several major criminal and political scandals, the circumstances of several never having been completely cleared or resolved and, indeed, some continuing to this very day. Zuma also tends to incite division through his personal behavior - having five wives and numerous bastard children may work for him, personally, but is not considered de rigeur among a greater part of South Africans, and certainly does nothing to improve his reputation overseas.

So, Bloggy dear, let's review: We have soapies telling everyone whites are evil while corruption of state-run companies rises alarmingly as it does in the ANC and the country itself, which is led by a controversial president with a chequered past. Hmmm. What else can we throw in the mix? Well, how about Julius Malema?

Who's he? you ask? Ah, glad you want to know. Here's what one website says: Julius Sello Malema (born 3 March 1981, in Seshego) is a South African politician, and the president of the African National Congress Youth League. He is best known for his controversial statements and speeches, and intense support for African National Congress president Jacob Zuma.  So let's get this straight - born in 1981, which makes him 30 next year, and the president of a youth league? For most of us, youth end at the very latest at 25. After all, most of us recognize that 30 is the beginning of middle age, and middle age and youth have, in most people's books, precious little in common.

Aside from that glaring fact, Malema is probably the single most controversial figure in South African politics today, even more so as of late, than Zuma himself. For starters, he has an extraordinarily big mouth, which he has extreme difficulty keeping shut. Usually, when he opens it, it is to insert an entire shoe-store and always with extraordinarily bad timing. Whether it's a controversial, dangerous and unsettling topic such as nationalizing all the mines in this mineral-rich country, or undermining Zuma's own feeble efforts at trying to bring some sort of cooperation back to Zimbabwe's erratic government through proclaiming to the world press during an "official" visit  to the decrepit dictator Robert Mugabe that the ANC wants the despot's Zanu-PF party to stay in power and that it has the"full support" of all of South Africa, Malema can be counted on to distract from Zuma's weaknesses and frailties by giving local and international pundits a workout. 

Recently, he's managed to whip things up into even more of a frenzy by insisting he has the right to sing what he called a "struggle song" from the days of the apartheid era. The song, Aw dubul'ibhunu, (Zulu for "Shoot the Boer") was declared hate speech by the country's highest court, but Malema decided he could still sing it publicly (as did several other ANC members, who have since apologized).  Shortly after this latest commotion involving the great youth leader, the leader of one of the right-wing extremist parties, Eugene Terre Blanche, was brutally murdered on his farm. Terre Blanche, an odious scumbag leader of the local extremist equivalent of the American White People's Nazi Party, was - how could it be any different? - a farmer. [Okay, so he was hacked to death, not shot, by two black farm hands, and now there's a huge controversial debate ranging since claims have been aired saying a used condom of Terre Blanche's was found at the scene, leading to the suspicion that he was homosexual and enjoyed raping his farm hands on the side, but some here believe Malema may not be totally without blame in the whole case.]

What really amazes me in all of this is the incredible double standard here in Mzanzi. It's okay to do anything and say anything about one group of people, but anything said about another is automatically  a "racist slur" or "hate speech." Yes, this is a dangerous topic, but it will only grow more dangerous as long as the soapies continue to cast whites as the baddies, Zuma continues to be more of a buffoon than true leader, and Malema is allowed to continue antagonizing and misbehaving at every turn.

Especially irksome, too, is the fact hat South Africa is on the verge of blowing its first real chance at showcasing itself to the western world as a member of same. There are less than two months to go before the FIFA World Cup begins. Public service strikes, more corruption exposed, and more and more resentment against whites being stoked by Malema and others really is not going to help the country much, if it truly does want to encourage visitors and those tourist Dollars, Euros and Pounds. Apparently Malema and some of the other cronies urging death to whites and worse haven't come to realize one basic fact yet - the vast majority of the 350,000 expected soccer fans who will soon be descending from the skies on South Africa is not going to be black or colored...

Let's just hope that Zuma's latest efforts at reining in the unrepentant bad boy Malema work in time to not have a detrimental effect on the World Cup and don't ruin South Africa's first-ever chance at truly impressing upon the world just what a wonderful place it is. After all, South Africa needs those tourists, but they don't need Malema, crime, corruption, race riots and anything else that will scare them off.

So while we are being besieged morning noon and night by ad campaigns exhorting us all to "feel it, it is here," it's still readily apparent that that sentiment is a last-ditch effort at trying to instill some sort of excitement and will to behave properly in everyone, yet apparently not in politicos.  Go figure...

The Adventure Continues

Dear Blog,

A while back, I shared with you some of my experiences at the entirely fictitious airline known as Teutonic International Transportation Service (or TITS, for short). Apparently, some people decided that despite my careful insertion of a disclaimer, they should take my posting seriously and I was actually approached by someone about the post, telling me that describing any place of employment as Merde Hill was just too horrible and disrespectful and that therefore this person would have to "defriend" me on FaceBook... 

Alas, some people have their senses of humor so carefully buried under layers of I don't know what that they can no longer even step back and laugh at the world, even when the world - be it work, friends, life in general or our own actions - is truly comical or sublimely ridiculous in so many ways.

Now, Blog dear, please don't be offended by my long absence. I wasn't neglecting you or trying to be mean to you. You should know that during my mute period I actually composed several entries - one a scathing review of why South Africa is simply nowhere near ready for FIFA, the other an abject castigation of the country's parastatals (also known elsewhere as state-owned or state-controlled monopolies). Both were very vitriolic and made for good reading, but not that good - after all - these two topics already have been covered ad nauseam elsewhere. 

Here, for example, is a fabulous link on why South Africa is not ready for FIFA - quite definitive, really. Likewise, here is a link to the best explanation as to why South Africa's parastatals suck - my point exactly.

But for now, back to TITS. 

Ah, TITS, you fair-haired Brunhilde amongst the world's air carriers! In truly Teutonic fashion, you are about as graceful on the world's stage as a hippopotamus in a tutu! 

After my last diatribe, as I've already pointed out, things worsened. Not just a little, but dramatically. (Just like those italics!) Let's recap - at fabulous Merde Hill, as I've chosen to name the hive in which the entirely fictitious worker bees (or ants) and their many layers of keepers (or soldier ants or bees) and ubiquitous drones and their Queen toil away 24/7, 365 days a year, things have "hotted up," as South Africans like to say. 

Not too long ago, after the worker bees (or ants) were told to suck it up - it was just plain and simply "tough dung" that we had stress and too much on our plates and that there was no way the load could be reduced or the stress somehow lessened, the load got even worse. People were freaking out, shouting into communications devices, threatening to walk off the job. Some of the worker bees (or ants) were even beginning to talk in dark corners. Could they have been plotting an overthrow? Or worse, could they have been getting ready to walk out en masse - leave the protective warmth of the hive and chance venturing out into the sunlight, free from the accustomed fumes of body odor, bad breath and farts and dung they customarily endure?

In the meantime, however (as this post is requiring several days to compose) either I have become naturally dulled as to things that used to vex me into a state of delicious lip-writhing frothiness, or I have actually begun to shed several decades worth of independent spirit and "settle" for what I have, rather than to keep on protractedly looking for more meaning to life than existing merely to be someone else's worker bee at a mediocre salary which barely permits existence. So I think it's time for my first-ever blog poll...

Maybe some of the nice people that occasionally deign it necessary to commiserate with me and read this epic tome will vote in it, who knows?

Online Surveys & Market Research

Okay, peeps, it's up to you now...

The Lovely Bones and Other Fun Stuff...

Dear Blog,

it's amazing what 10 days off can do for a body in terms of relaxation. I wonder how long this feeling will last when I go back to Merde Hill and TITS on Friday afternoon? We'll see.

So let me tell you what I've been up to, since I've been neglecting you during the past few days...

First off, I've been busy going to take pictures again. Some of them came out quite nicely, if I do say so myself...

So, on Day 1 of Photo Safari, I took off in a southerly direction from Muizenberg. It was cloudy and gray out, much like today. Since clear, sunny and blue is the normal order of things, I decided cloudy and gray would be a nice contrast, and so it was -

Past Miller's Point: A view of the Cape of Good Hope in the distance. Being frugal these days, driving all the way to the actual Cape of Good Hope didn't seem a good investment, but the trip below Simon's Town was worth it, as was the trip back -

A part of Simon's Town Harbor known as Kozy Korner...  colorful, and bonus - a German Navy cruiser is visible in the background behind all the yacht masts.

Catholic church in St. James along the road back toward Muizenberg, where the roadworks make for a long wait and time enough to take pictures like this. 

Day 2 - Go North, old fart, go North!

The Hottentot Holland mountains with their own "tablecloth" made for a terrific sight from the N1. 

 

Cape Town from the harbor to Table Mountain, as seen from Signal Hill.

Bo Kaap and the colored houses made for good eye candy.

I had always wanted to go see the Noon Gun go off. Naturally, I wasn't wearing a watch, and so I arrived up at the summit at 12:42... yes, that might have been in time in other time zones, but not here, sadly. So I spent the time up there taking more pictures of the city unfolding below me. 

Recently, my friend Uli posted a picture he and a friend had taken from up on Table Mountain, with the new Green Point Stadium in the background. When I saw that photo, I thought to myself how amazingly the glitzy new structure looks like a bedpan from that angle! It does from Signal Hill, too, although not quite as eerily -

Barely visible in the background at left is Robben Island. The sun and sea spray added a nice mist effect to this shot...

So what to do after a nice day in the sun, zooming around in my trusty vehicle, Lancelot XI (all of my vehicles are always called Lancelot, except for the first one I bought in South Africa, which was named Ottokar, and turned out to be a huge disaster)?

 

Off to the internet cafe in Muizenberg and then off to the movies!  Since Blue Route Mall's theater has decided only to show Kiddie Porn this week (not really, but mainly crap, so it might as well be Kiddie Porn, as far as I'm concerned), a trip to Noordhoek was in order to see The Lovely Bones.

What a great movie. It deals with the sad case of a young girl who is murdered. The phtography and graphics are lush and amazing,  The acting is wonderful, although Marky Mark (Wahlberg) never ages in 15 years of time in the movie, which is a little sad. 

The young girl who is murdered (no, I'm not going to give anything away here - go see it yourself!) is played by Saoirse Ronan, and Grandma, the family lush, is played by none other than her majesty, Susan Sarandon. The acting is, all around and on all counts, superb. 

I think this is one of the better oeuvres I've seen this year, and I was glad to see that the four other people in the cinema seemed to feel the same way.

The movie is not scary, not a cheap horror flick, but rather, like the book of the same name, a celebration of life and the afterlife, if there be such a thing. The good part, which blended well with my own personal belief-set, was that while there is talk of heaven, it is not in that "cram-it-down-your-throat" biblical sense, but rather in a sort of ethereal sense I can tolerate. And the stunning graphics throughout made it even more palatable..

Well, dearest Blog, that about wraps things up for today. Tomorrow Lancelot is having knee surgery at SupaQuik, which will make him feel better, fo sho', even if I have to hang around an auto repair shop in Tokai for goodness knows how long...

So, until next time I feel the need to blog, ciao, bellezza!

 

Spam, spam, spam... marvelous spam!

So how often do you get spam? What kind of spam do you find most frequently in your e-mail inbox? Do you know where the word "spam"  takes its origins? 

Yesterday, as I was wading ankle-deep through the mountain of spam that my various mailboxes routinely accumulate, I started thinking about this topic and thought it might be a good thing to ponder (or belabor, depending on your point of view) here.

So let's start out with what Spam actually is. In the original sense of the word, Spam is a product made by an American meat-packing company, Hormel, which invented the stuff in 1937 as an economical way to preserve and provide meat, as most families did not have refrigerators and the only alternatives at that time were either salted or smoked products.  SPiced hAM (which is supposedly what the name means) got its name as the result of a naming contest Hormel held in 1937, when it was first marketed in the USA. It became a household staple during World War II, was sent to U.S. troops around the globe and thus virally introduced into each country Americans were doing battle in.  

Today it is considered a delicacy, strangely, in Hawaii and Guam, although no one can really figure out why. The 7 billionth (yes, that's a 'b') can of the stuff was sold in 2008. It's biggest boost came in 1971, when the Monty Python's Flying Circus show on BBC created its immortal Spam Song and sketch. 

When e-mail became popular, soon marketing moguls world wide figured out that sending unsolicited e-mails to people was a brilliant way to tout their wares and thus modern SPAM was born. And the world has never been the same since...

 Scanning today's 831 entries in my different e-mail boxes, I see that I apparently have very small breasts which need augmentation, as well as an undersized penis which apparently also needs improvement, Additionally, I am apparently already so senile that I am in urgent need of miracle brain fitness cures and amazing memory aides. Back on the sexual front, someone apparently has decided that I like to engage in illicit activities involving barnyard animals and is willing to send me hundreds of photos thereof which are "guaranteed to make [me] hot." Oh joy. I can hardly wait, even though Melissa, the pet ewe who lives with me, will be very jealous indeed.

Recently, I found out that apparently I have been lucky enough to win various and sundry lotteries in Britain, the EU, and a host of African nations, the foremost of which is Nigeria. Apparently, a number of widows of former government oil, gas, and other ministers there want to share their late husbands' riches, which seem to be mysteriously locked away in bank accounts which they can only access with my help, if I immediately send them all my current banking details. Once I have given them free reign over my own precarious finances here, they promise to send me millions of dollars as my "share" for helping them get these (obviously illegally amassed) fortunes out of Nigeria, although sometimes other nations such as Ghana, Upper Volta, Cameroon and Sierra Leone are also mentioned.

One recent e-mail, purporting to be from a bank president in Nigeria, launched a new twist on the previous formula. It went something like this:

Dear Sir,

It is with utmost and heartfelt sadness that I must communicate the tragic and untimely passing of your brother, XXX, his wife, XXX, and their two children, XXX and XXX, in a head-on collision on the dual carriageway between Abuja and Lagos last July. 

XXX was prescient enough to leave a last will and testament naming you as the successor and heir to his vast fortune, on deposit in our bank.

Please submit the attached form completed and naming your bank details so that we may immediately transfer the funds in your late brother's account to you without delay. The estate is, as of last accounting, in the neighborhood of U.S.$ 25,789,402.68, which will be transferred to you immediately upon receiving your details, minus our state-imposed commission and fees amounting to 10 per cent, or US$2,578,894.

We are saddened by your loss and profoundly wish you well and God bless.

Yours sincerely

Dr. Ndungu Charles Obote

President

Bank of Lagos, etc. etc.

Naturally, I was quite alarmed to learn that my brother and his entire family had a) been wiped out in a tragic head on collision that I had not heard of sooner; b) that this had taken place in Nigeria, so far from their home on the U.S. east coast; and c) that he had somehow amassed such a huge fortune (although he is a veterinary, so who knows...); and d) that he had chosen to bank this massive amount of cash in, of all places, Nigeria!

Now I know eccentric millionaires like to do odd things, but banking fortunes in Nigeria was a delightful new twist, considering that eccentric millionaires to this day prefer Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands by more than 1.000:1 over African nations.

Being somewhat cautious by nature, I determined that my next course of action should be to forward said e-mail to my (apparently late) brother's last known e-mail address, which I did forthwith, thus also allowing him to enjoy some fortuitous Spam. Less than an hour later, I had confirmation that this lovely piece of Spam was another hoax, sadly. I was overjoyed to learn of my brother's and his family's continued good health, but also saddened by the fact that I would not be a multimillionaire after all....*sigh*

Lately, though, the tenor of my Spam has changed. I am now being constantly "pre-selected" as an eligible business partner for various Chinese enterprises wishing me to be their sole representative in Africa. Naturally, I have somehow (mysteriously) come to their attention and they can not imagine a better choice for their attempt at saturating the dark continent with their life-changing miracle wares.Now, I am aware that I have over the years posted my resume out on the web several dozen times, but I didn't realize that I was about to be the recipient of such wonderful fortunate opportunities... I can hardly wait to begin!

________________________________________________________

If you've always been a Spam aficionado and have been wondering how to improve your culinary skills using this delightful treat (gag!), here's the link you've been looking for: Spam Recipe Exchange

Various and Sundry... a Grab Bag of Goodies!

Dear Blog,

Yesterday, I broke one of my cardinal laws of existence - I went to see a movie alone, something I very rarely do as I find people who go to movies by themselves just sad. Somehow it radiates the message, I'm such a loser, I can't even find anyone to go see a film with me. Well, Karen from the Internet Cafe wanted to go with me but had to work, so nyah! nyah! - I wasn't radiating loserness. And the movie I went to see, Sherlock Holmes, was on its last legs here - yesterday was the last day, so I'm very glad I went. Amazingly well-made, obviously the first of hopefully many more to come. Ever since they seem to have managed to get Robert Downey Jr. dried out or off the drugs or both, he has been on fire. Iron Man was amazing (with No. 2 in that series to be released here shortly), and so was Sherlock Holmes. Jude Law was also sensational in it (which actually is a good thing for him, since most everything he's been in for quite a while has been absolute crap).

***

I don't know why I find TV advertisements such a fascinating topic, probably because I have so much time on my hands and some of these ads are better than the actual programs running on South African television. And so on to more South African TV ads, this time both good and bad.

After a little research, I was actually able to find the ad I mentioned in yesterday's blog for Robertson's Spices on line, so here it is - tada!

A few others came to mind as I watched TV last night after getting home from the cinema, and the vary from wonderfully imaginative to absolutely stupid. I had forgotten about the commercial for Cadbury's Lunch Bar until I saw it last night, and it definitely deserves to be seen by everyone. 

Another good one is for Klipdrift, a South African (rotgut) brandy. Watch it and enjoy it - quite funny how some, er, um, tea with ice can lubricate those vocal chords...

Stimorol, the Danish chewing gum that took the world by storm, also has its own bizarre but funny campaign going here -

And here is a clip of what I would definitely rank as South Africa's dumbest, stupidest and worst ad campaign currently running. One of our local supermarket chains, Checkers, has a sale once a year apparently, called Heydays, and this year's campaign is so bad, it is unbelievable! Here's the ad without the actual products (there is about 10 seconds sandwiched in the middle where they advertise two items on sale; ad people call this type of ad a donut). What floors me most about this very sad ad is that of the 30 seconds it runs, about 20 is taken up with the grimacing face of an old fart, and his oh-so-hilarious (not!), cutesy (not!) barbershop-old timey movie antics. The agency that made the ad definitely lives up to its own name of 99 cents, since that's about what the ad is worth...

Finally, on this topic, here's a weird ad by Allan Gray, a brokerage house. It features James Dean, the actor who died in a tragic car accident in 1955. The only purpose for this appallingly tasteless, poor ad I can extract is that it is supposed to make people think about how rich Dean would be if he had lived and had invested with Allan Gray. I've got news for the makers - James Dean was a major young star and very rich when he died. He would have enjoyed a long, rewarding movie career and been able to buy all of Allan Gray easily, so what's the point? 

***

On Tuesday, I interrupted my blissfully peaceful vacation by returning to Merde Hill for a meeting with my fellow team members at TITS. It was the usual dull stuff - we saw a nice little PowerPoint presentation with statistics on how many mistakes we had made versus the other two TITS locations. We did quite well in some areas, but, as usual, that was not good enough for the powers that be, who continue to insist that we must be perfect in all we do. Again, there's nothing more likely to create and foster a positive work environment by being told on a regular basis how badly you've done! Of course, this approach is and remains positively Teutonic. The Teutonians have never quite grasped the concept of positive reinforcement... 

During the topic, the point was raised that our work assignments, called Tischeinteilungen are often so badly set up that perfection is a lost cause, a point agreed upon by most (except one little sycophant who must be sleeping with someone in the department that does the Tischeinteilungen or hoping to...). When our Fearless Leader (not our Team Leader - the man who is our keeper, so to speak) was besieged by voices complaining about the high stress levels we are enduring due to the bad work lists, and was given actual examples of how they have worsened in the past few weeks, he went on the defensive, telling us that when we signed our contracts we knew very well that there would be stress involved, which was a new tactic. 

Sadly, that's also an argument in and of itself that TITS may want to reconsider - after all, millions of scientific studies around the globe will substantiate the fact that humans, when under duress and stressed make many more mistakes than when less taxed and relaxed. Common sense and the mind of five year olds even know this. So if TITS wants perfection, then reducing stress, not hiding behind contracts, is definitely the way to go... 

The argument brought forth by Fearless was that we are dealing in human lives (a fact none of us ever forgets) and therefore perfection was not negotiable. Agh, shame, lovey - it looks like this is a losing battle for all sides now!

The solution is actually quite simple, dear TITS -

1. Never promise any client 100% perfection. If you promise a margin of error no greater than 98.5%, you are in the ballpark, as the statistics on our performance we saw easily will prove. Besides, we are already delivering nigh on 100% perfection as relates to safety; it's delays that are the main culprit, and those are indubitably and unquestioningly linked to the crap Tischeinteilungen, stress and the blame-shifting which TITS culture fosters...
2. Fix the crap Tischeinteilungen already! Stop making excuses for the wankers (um, sorry, er, naturally I meant soldier bees or ants) doing that job - if we get rated on performance, why don't they? And how would one do that? Easy - you have us rate their work, as we are the ones who must bail out TITS every time aforementioned wankers do a crap job. Also, each time any of us incurs a delay, part of the blame must automatically be attributed back to them by means of the crap paperwork we already have to file anyway.
3. Rework the work schedule so as to provide two days off in a row in every break scenario. Again, numerous scientific studies have shown globally that a human being cannot recharge and recover properly - especially in stressful jobs! - when she or he has less than 48 hours off work in which to do so...
4. Never ever hide behind a contract again. Many of my fellow worker ants (or bees) have worked for companies around the globe. Each of these companies is convinced their work environments, pace, work load and deadlines are stressful, even though in reality they might better be termed relaxing or spa-like when compared to ours. Those applying for work at TITS usually have only such previous experience elsewhere as point of reference. After all, exactly how stressful the life of a TITS worker ant (or bee) really is does not become apparent until well after that contract has been signed... Correct me if I'm wrong, but legally speaking, doesn't that somehow smack of false pretenses?

Disclaimer: The characters, companies, personifications, names and facts in the preceding entry are entirely fictitious. Should they inadvertently be similar to or resemble any actual company or persons or entity, this is a pure coincidence and entirely unintentional.

***

Fun footnote - yesterday I found out one of the South African FaceBook buddies I met online before I came here has moved into my apartment complex! What a coincidence and what fun! 

And so, dear Blog, I close once more for the day. One last shout out to my wonderful sister Peggy, about whom we are all a little worried these days. She's married to a wonderfully able and competent endocrinologist, thankfully, so the recent diagnosis of pancreatitis and possible cancer of the pancreas is not quite as dooming as it otherwise might be...

All about South African TV...

Wow, you're thinking, what a boring topic...

Well, you'd be right in a way, but also wrong. While SABC can best be called a gigantic government propaganda mill which we have to pay for in "TV license fees," it does have some merits. And when you're off for 10 days of actually unwanted leave due to the gross inefficiency of the vacation-granting folk at fabulous TITS, ah, well, what is left but TV?

While I'm rattling on about inefficiency, the same holds true for the local SAT-TV people - I am still waiting for a hook-up to the shared dish at the complex in which I live, and judging by the pace at which they seem to do just about anything, I'll still be waiting when I move out at the end of July... so for now, I enjoy (um, within limits) the four channels I am able to receive over the airwaves - SABC 1, 2 & 3 and eTV, the only non-government owned station I can get. 

My TV diet, accordingly, is rather limited and mundane. eTV has as its evening flagship program reruns of America's ghastly WWF - World Wrestling Federation - fake wrestling shows with grotesque fat men and women in outrageous make-up and costumes bouncing on each other, pretending to take the whole thing seriously and all the while giving "killer mentality" interviews to the "media."  Yawn. Exit eTV from my line-up, except on Thursday nights, when they usually show a fairly newish film, albeit a "chick flick" which can range from excellent to "click."

Of the government-owned channels, SABC3 is my favorite, as it seems to have the best lineup. I think I already commented somewhere (maybe not in this blog, but somewhere, I know) on how diseased daytime TV here is, but night time TV can be actually watchable. Tuesdays 3 has a good lineup - first there's The Big Bang, a quirky comedy from the U.S. which probably got dumped there quickly but is actually quite funny. Then there's Solving It, a very decent South African-made program about crimes here that have been solved by the (sometimes aptly-named) SAPS (or South African Police Service - I kid you not!), which has excellent production values and is interesting and makes a decent substitute for my former diet of "unsolved crime," "cold case files," and other A&E fare I was even able to follow in Germany... Solving It is followed by the investigative journalism program Special Assignment which is quite well-made, also, and crowned by my current favorite, the extremely wonderful Ugly Betty, one of the best shows to come out of the USA in decades.

No matter how limited the lineup may be and how frustrating it can be to be subjected to the dreadful talk shows (some of them local, with 3Talk with Noelene being the "flagship" on SABC) and reruns of American talk show queens (again, I'm not kidding! they actually re-run U.S. talk shows about 9 months late here!) such as Oprah and Tyra Banks, the person whose picture appears next to the definition of boob-tube in any English dictionary anywhere... I cannot say enough about her - vapid, brain-dead,vacuous moron, complete and utter idiot are but a few of the choicer epithets that come to mind instantly.

But the real reason for today's rant is TV commercials, or adverts, as they are known here. South Africa produces amazingly good ones, as well as amazingly bad ones. Today, I'm focused on the good ones. Sadly, as I don't have video capturing facilities at home and two of my favorites can't be found anywhere else, I'll only be able to mention them here:

First, there's the current Robertson's Spices commercial, in which we are treated to a lovely, big black Mama who is about to roast a chicken and decides it needs "spices." So she dresses in her Sunday best and exits the house, her chicken in the roaster under her arm, and makes towards the market, where she tries a few spice blends and says she wants "more better" stuff. She is directed to the high Himalayas, and rows across the ocean (the uncooked, uncooled chicken with her all the while), goes to an oriental market and is then directed up to the "highest mountain," which she amazingly climbs in her Sunday shoes, stoutly and determinedly making for what appears to be a Buddhist monastery, where she samples the goods and says she wants two bags of the stuff. Of course, the people there tell her that they just sold it all to South Africa to Robertson's Spices. We see her rowing home, chicken along for the ride, entering her local market, where she selects the bottle of the stuff she presumably sampled on the mountain, and next we see her presenting the roasted, spiced chicken, beaming with pride. Extremely funny and well made, even if, obviously, that chicken would kill anyone who ate it...

 My other unavailable favorite is from Wimpy's - the burger chain Brits and South Africans know, but Americans have never heard of. Actually, it was around all over Europe long before the nefarious Golden Arches had made it out of the U.S. and was named after J. Wellington Wimpy, a character in the Popeye cartoon show of yore. In 2009, Wimpy's had a wonderful spot in which they were promoting their bottomless glass of Coca-Cola for R9.99. As Americans probably don't realize, soft drinks at restaurants in most places on this Earth are not "bottomless," i.e., a free refill is non-existent. Most of us have to pay every time we order another soft drink, unlike in the U.S. where once bought, the waitron will refill the glass until we explode or beg off, whichever comes first.

Wimpy was celebrating its month-long promotion with a series of commercials in which normal people would take a sip, then open their mouths and emit choral music touting the "9.99" bottomless refills, with different versions for each ethnic group here. The person "singing" would usually have a wonderful look of sheer confusion on their face, as though he or she was being controlled by a force beyond their capacity - the best was the lovely Indian grandma in her sari - the looks on her face and her son's were priceless.

Some of the other wonderful spots have been captured, so I am able to share them here with you! Enjoy a multimedia feast...

First there's my favorite Not Ayoba from MTN, a local cell company. Ayoba is a local expression akin to "cool," so "not Ayoba" would of course mean "uncool"... watch and learn -

Next, there's Hall's cough drops - well-known for very bad spots in the U.S., with an amazing South African entry:

South Africans are, contrary to popular belief elsewhere, not exempt from the women's rights movement. A company here is known for primarily targeting women's insurance needs and they do this with a lot of humor. Two of their best works follow:

No. 2 is actually very Cape Town-specific. The city has some unfinished parts of the freeway network which are well-known, but apparently only very locally, as you'll see here -

Just like everywhere else, South Africans love their cell-phones and there's fierce competition for customers. Here's an entry by Virgin Mobile, which apparently was removed from the airwaves after a church in Johannesburg complained about it...

South Africans love their beer and booze, too. Here's an entry from one of the local brews (sadly now owned by American megaconglomerate Miller) which is wonderful -

Well, hope you enjoyed those as much as I love seeing them.

Agh, What A Day (Again)!

Dearest Blog,

As you know, I work for a large international airline here in Cape Town. Let's call that airline Teutonic International Transportation Services (TITS for short) - just for fun.  We have lots of fun at work some days; other days are closer to what I imagine Hell, if there were such a place, would be like. Today was one of those days.

Allow me to elucidate. We (my colleagues at TITS and I) are all "agents," i.e. worker ants (or bees, depending on your point of view). Each morning we are given a list of the flights we will process and we make out way to our own personal "kennel du jour" where we set up our flights on computer screens and process them and get ready to do the job at hand. Don't bother your pretty head with details about the job - it relates to helping those giant (and not-so-gigantic) TITS planes take to the air and stay there until they are supposed to come back down again - not before.

Somewhere upstairs in our building (perpetuating the fact that shit really does roll downhill, for the kennels for worker ants (or bees) are at the bottom of that hill...), there are soldier ants (or bees) who make up the list of flights each one of us poor little unimportant worker bees (or ants) must process each work day. Depending on how much care or effort these soldier ants (or bees) put into their work, our work day can be very pleasant (very rare!), bearable (happens occasionally, but not often), bad (the norm), disgusting (not uncommon) or sheer and utter hell  (happens a lot, a la abandon all hope..), much like today. 

As I have already explained to you elsewhere, TITS isn't very good when there is snow at our Teutonic hubs. As a matter of fact, whenever there is snow in those cities, TITS falls out of its proverbial brassiere and basically goes into a total floppy state. 

On those days, we usually have a bad day. As also detailed elsewhere, TITS owns two other airlines in two constantly snowbound Alpine countries. Both deal with tons of snow every year and have no trouble with it. As a matter of fact, most of their flights usually depart exactly on time, no matter how bad the weather at TITS hubs or at their own... just like the proverbial Swiss watch. An exception to that rule is, well, an exception... As previously mused, you'd think that TITS would ask its two daughters how to handle snowfall at its own hubs, but apparently no one at the top of the hive has had that impulse yet - after all, it would be entirely un-Teutonic to ask the vanquished for advice, wouldn't it?

Today was an Abandon All Hope day at TITS and shortly after arrival, the entire operation became saggy and went into total floppiness, with TITS becoming dangerously bra-less and out of control (not just for me and one or two others, as is usually the case, but for nearly everyone there). The din in the place was close to that you'd get if you put 1,000 dentists into a 5 x 5 tiled room with no sound-absorption (we work on the phones and TITS uses really bad VOIP connections, so we all have to yell about 80 percent of  the time). The cacophony was unbelievable and my skull is still vibrating as I type...

Tempers flared. Yelling and screaming akin to the trumpeting heard when elephants mate was omnipresent, and our computers, equipped as they are with their already over-engineered and unbearably buggy Teutonic software (plugged into South Africa's oh-so-speedy internet connection  which I suspect is a giant string with a paper cup at each end somewhere out near Johnannesburg) did their level best to hamper our every move. Changing screens was as fast as molasses on a cold day, and getting the system to do anything at all was nearly miraculous. (Too bad we didn't have confetti and little horns present to celebrate each uneventful and successful flight - that would have been fun!)

Add to that the impossible workload foisted upon each of us by those soldier bees (or ants) with their very bad work ethic and (what they believe to be mercurial) senses of humor and we had the makings of a near revolution on hand. I had to work hard to fight the urge to get up and walk off the job, something I have not felt in at least, oh, eight or nine months. A few others voiced similar opinions of the work day, and one of my buddies (and kennel mates)  just kept cackling away, as she has already given her notice and knows the end of her ride in Hell is in sight, so for the next few days she'll put up with just about anything.

Now the fun part of all of this is that we, the worker ants (or bees) at the bottom of Merde Hill, would be annihilated if we did the crap job the soldier bees (or ants) do on a routine basis. We would be destroyed, with niggling deductions made from our "performance based bonus" and eventually might wind up paying the company to continue enjoying the privilege of working for TITS! 

Whenever we have made the benign mothership aware of this fact, we are ignored with celestial silence. Apparently that's one of the privileges of being a soldier bee (or ant) along with being able to work normal working hours (we work bizarre shifts forcing us to arise at 4 a.m. and suchlike, as detailed elsewhere in this blog), being paid more than we are, and not having any sort of punishment or redress occur whenever they screw up and make life hell for us work ants (or bees) several floors below.

Ah, yes... perchance to dream of becoming a soldier bee (or ant)! 

Now let me also point out to you, my dearest Blog, that our base pay here at TITS South Africa is lower than the common dole unemployed people get in the home country, and even with those "performance based benefits" (which are routinely bestowed and then nickeled and dimed away again, based on the errors one might make when one has to work on the incredibly bad work done for us by those loving, aforementioned  soldier bees (or ants)) we make less than a long-term unemployed slacker back in Teutonia.

But, wait! That's not all! Yes, there's more!

As you may have heard, dear Blog, Teutonia was once a land divided and at the tail end of the 1990s, both halves kissed, made up and became reunified Teutonia. Eastern Teutonia had a long history of making life Hell for its citizens by spying on every step and breath they took. No one in that country knew exactly who was spying on whom, and the East Teutonian government liked it like that. Their fabulous Spy Central was knows to the citizenry as the SSD (or Stasi for short).

Much like there were miraculously no bad men and women called Nazis left when Teutonia was vanquished at the end of the great calamity which ended in 1945 (also known as World War II), apparently a second miracle occurred when Teutonia East and West fell into each other's buxom arms in 1998 and kissed and made up again - by some miracle, it came to pass that no one had ever worked for the Stasi! Will wonders ever cease?

Well, that's the official version.

In reality, Stasi spies just migrated into society at large, where Teutonian companies were eager to give them a new "chance" and immediately grabbed as many as they could. The result was phenomenal - Teutonians found themselves being spied on at work in record numbers, with all sorts of fun and inventive new methods they weren't used to or had not experienced in old West or East Teutonia. Sure, East Teutonians were hip to their telephones crackling and echoing meaning that Big Brother was listening in to see what was being said. But since computer technology in both Teutonias was not that developed at the time, they weren't really aware of how many sneaky, nasty tools those devious ex-Stasians would invent for corporate clients like TITS (just as a random example).

And so it came to pass that a number of scandals occurred in the newly unified Teutonia - not only did large companies and parastatals like Teutonian Rail and Teutonian Telecommunications get caught out and have to confess they had been spying on their employees unabashedly (and not only in line with work surveillance, either!), but eventually even the government was victimized by these overeager Spy Ants (or bees).

So, why, you're doubtlessly wondering, dear Blog, do I mention that here? Ah! Well TITS has its share of those ex-Stasians, too! While the crackling and echoing and snapping and generally crap quality of our phone lines can honestly be blamed on the aforementioned bad connections we enjoy here at the tip of Africa, the amount of spying done under the guise of "work supervision" can't. The spying is devious and nasty, but all done for "quality control" purposes, of course. 

Apparently, TITS believes that all of us and all our work should be "absolutely perfect" and has made great bones about that fact in advertising and internal propaganda, too. [Apparently no one has ever bothered to tell the head officers of TITS about the hundreds of thousands of scientific studies (or the common sense imbued in most 5-year-olds) that say that perfection is unattainable as long as human beings are involved. After all, we are humans, not robots or even badly-over engineered Teutonic software.]

So today I, too, received a "no-no gram" - apparently several weeks ago (our mistakes always are brought out several weeks after the fact, after our memories are so fried by cacophony and additional hellatious days, that we can't remember a thing and have no records to help us remember and thus cannot challenge the "findings") I dared to plan a TITS flight with what we call "delivery at aircraft" bags in Compartment 1 instead of Compartment 5 (cue large whooshing intake of air in total disbelief sound effect here) where they actually belong. 

Omigod, the world as we know it nearly ended, and it was MY fault! 

While I apparently fixed this before the process was done, that wasn't good enough for Mama TITS - reprimand that evil worker ant (or bee) who dared make such a horrendous (absolutely inconsequential) mistake; after all - he wasn't delivering perfection! God bless those hundreds of ex-Stasians working for Mama TITS! What would we do without them and their spying capabilities - a better job perhaps?

Well, dearest Blog, that about wraps up today's rant. Let's see what tomorrow brings. After all, Virginia, it's another day...

____________________________________

Disclaimer: Of course, all of the details above are entirely fictitious and bear no resemblance with anything at all in the real world. Any resemblance to real or imagined organizations or people or worker bees (or ants) or soldier ants (or bees) is purely coincidental and unintended...

So what should I do...

with the rest of my life? 

Have you ever asked yourself that question? 

I did before coming to South Africa, I still do and probably will continue to until I am old and dribbling somewhere, being sponge-bathed by rude nurses and wearing diapers... (urgh, what a thought!)

The current position I have here in South Africa is not bad (except for the rather low pay). Colleagues are nice, friendships are nascent, and in many ways this is a perfect place to live, albeit extremely vexing from time to time (read previous and future installments of this blog to learn more on that topic), but (and it's a huge but) the question keeps rearing its ugly head - 

is this all there is?

Some of my friends (and probably one of my two sisters) will doubtless immediately suggest I visit a church service and be "saved" or "rediscover" my "lost faith."  

Now, without any disrespect intended, thanks, but no thanks. I have a very difficult time accepting the idea of there being a higher power and find most organized religion as bad as any other confidence scheme that's out there. In that regard, I wholly agree with Karl Marx's assessments that "Refugion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" and "religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand" but don't usually trumpet the fact that I concur with him as my father, a very wise man in his own right, taught me that many things - especially matters of faith and of the heart - are deeply personal, and therefore best kept completely private.

I'm also convinced that Friedrich Nietzsche wasn't altogether off his beam or the mark when he said that, "a casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything," "faith [is] not wanting to know what is true," "I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time," "in Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point," and ultimately that, "the Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."

Nonetheless, as I drift through the second half of life, wondering about the first, marveling at the experiences already lived through, the good times, the bad times, the beauty, the ugliness, the joy, the pain, the suffering, the rewards and the losses, I find myself asking myself over and over again -

If there really is a superior being, a god if you will, how can he, she or it passively observe humankind and not pull his, her or its hair out at the roots in frustration? I can think of no single life form that has truly screwed up the planet more than the human being. I can also not in any way pardon this so-called supreme being - going here for a brief moment on the notion that there may be one - for his/her/its hands-off policy and allowing something as potentially beautiful as the human race to have gone so terribly awry.

These thoughts bring me back to that bold question above: Is this it? Can it really be that at 53 I have outlived all usefulness to the world and am now parked in this, possibly my penultimate position? Is there nothing else in store for me? 

But my wondering doesn't usually end there. I also tend to wonder, on those days when nothing seems to go my way (and there are many of them!), what I could have done to deserve whatever annoyance is plaguing me at that moment.

I have often asked myself if, in some previous life (okay, not so loud with the aha! so he does believe in somethings! out there, please) I was someone so awful that I have been sent back in present form to endure feelings of helplessness, suffering, stupidity and wonderment at just how screwed up I an my fellow man can be from time to time. In that vein I also include the sometimes incredible frustration at not having much to show in terms of what many call success - I am consistently and perseveringly broke, I cannot manage on the normal paycheck I earn, and I am not by any means living a lavish lifestyle, but rather a spartan one. 

Maybe this is it. It won't get any better than this... oh, no. What a horrid thought - I have to banish that one immediately. 

So the next step is obvious - just hope for the best (all the while expecting the worst) and keep living along... maybe someday I will have the luxury of being able to write the book I've always wanted to pen. 

In the meantime, however, the question remains unanswered - what should I do with the rest of my life? Stay here? Go somewhere else and start all over again Bide my time and see what develops? 

For the time being, I'm staying put. Even though South Africa, for all its beauty, is an extremely frustrating place to be and start over from scratch, I think I'll not just fold up my tent and pull up my stakes and go, but rather tough it out a little while longer.  Perhaps the key is to take secret and nearly perverse pleasure in hanging in there, not giving in and giving those forces that would frustrate me a run for their money. And perhaps getting more familiar with what makes this place tick so as to be able to use that to my advantage will help, too... 

So, dear blog, let's just conclude this rather pensive and absorbed installment with the notion that no matter how many frustrating little vexations, silly experiences, used cars that need repairs after having exhausted my budget, little drug-addicted lying leeches, dishonest business- and tradespeople, badly made South African products, rip-offs, discouragements, etc. you lay in my way, I'm resolved to overcome them all and stay, even if just to frustrate every one I can by doing so.

Stupid is...

Dear Blog,

I really must remember that while I may have inherited some of my father's innate engineering skills, I am not a mechanic. I feel like I should be sentenced to writing that mantra on a blackboard somewhere about 1,000 times like Bart Simpson does at the opening of each episode of that series...

As some of you know, I bought a co-worker's pristine old Nissan Sentra not too long ago and immediately went about doing what I usually do - fixing and puttering and improving where I felt it was needed. New seat covers, new floor mats, checked all the vital fluids, gave it a thorough washing and cleaning and vacuuming and lubricated whatever needed it, etc. Among the checks was the battery, which seemed to me to be low on water, so off to the drugstore for distilled water and fill fill fill...

Therein lay the snag. You can actually fill a battery's chambers too full (duh, most people would call that overfilling, you dolt!)...  naturally, I assumed I had done well and that Nissan would be happy. Well, er, it weren't so. The weird short (which manifests itself in that when the CD is playing and I switch from low-beam headlights to high-beams, the CD stops for a few moments) grew aggravated. It grew so aggravated so as to make the car act haunted, even possessed!

Driving home after watching Avatar recently, the car began to start misbehaving badly (inducing panic in the driver, naturally). Symptoms went from annoying to bizarre to worse... stepping on the brake pedal would cause the ventilator fan to stop. As it was raining, the windshield wipers were on, and they seemed to get slower and slower while the dashboard lights faded to the point of near black-out. As I was driving Chapman's Peak Drive, it got scary. I switched off the CD altogether and that improved things slightly - the windshield wipers began behaving less erratically. I switched the vent fan (defogger) off and things got better still.  I drove with low-beams only (and thus much slower) and made it home, albeit worried as I had to get up early and drive to work in the dark next morning.

Being an optimist (could have fooled you, huh?) I decided that everything would be alright in the morning. Car started, off we tootled towards downtown. I experimented along the way to have a near repeat performance manifest itself by a new display of automotive haunting, thus learning that I was not able to use the CD if I wanted the lights and dash lights to work properly.

As I had been through all of this with the predecessor vehicle, a rotten old VW Jetta which was more concealed rust than car, I immediately assumed the battery had gone to the dogs, connecting it to my recent efforts at making things better. A quick look under the hood (translation: bonnet for South Africans) confirmed that the battery's little "magic eye" thingy had gone from green (good!) to a red dot (very bad). Since this is one of those cash-sparse months (after having done all the other things getting a new skedonk entails), a new battery seemed like a very bad thing to have to invest in at a very inopportune time.

That afternoon I drove home from work and on the driveway ramp leading to the Fort Knox-esque, electrified gates surround ye olde Baronial manse, Nissan hiccuped and decided to die. My mind went into absolute shock as this exact same thing had happened in the exact same spot with aforementioned predecessor vehicle, a/k/a POS or Piece of Shit. No! Not again! And that had cost over a cool grand to get fixed (American readers - note: Rands, not Dollars).

I rolled Nissan back down the drive and after much cursing, many attempts at reviving the now obviously dead as a doornail battery, gave up, muttering and cursing about everything and the world and locked up the car and went inside, worrying that someone would break into it or do more damage to it than I already had in my own glorious stupidity.

The new and revolting development also meant I had to get up reeeeallly early again next morning thanks to the absolutely foul, stupid and useless Metro schedule - after all, if the battery didn't somehow miraculously "recover" on its own, I'd have to take the train in to work. Most inconvenient.

I woke up on time, tired as I could be, went through my morning triple S^* and went out, hoping for the best and fearing the worst. Expectations were not let down - turning the key produced a click followed by an obviously dead battery sound.  I trotted off to the Metro station, only to find out that a schedule change caused by some tracks having been wiped out by waves nearby meant I had just missed the train I had gotten up so early for and the next one, which would get me to work half an hour late of course, meant I could have stayed in bed at least another 45 minutes... groan.

No matter, I called work, let them know I was on my way and would be late and then tortured myself all day long trying to figure a way out of what seemed a hopelessly stupid, obviously self-induced and potentially expensive situation. On the way to the Metro station that afternoon, I suddenly had one of those epiphany moments and realized I could probably go to Game - a South African chain which seems to be sort of like Wal-Mart on a smaller scheme and look at batteries or - better yet - a battery charger!

Well, the batter charger worked a treat and for now Nissan is back on the road with the green eye happily showing under the hood. The high beam switch still makes the CD player hiccup, so further investigation is warranted - and I assume it is either a defective voltage regulator or whoever installed said CD player has hooked something up wrong somewhere...

Ah, the bliss of car ownership! Well, come July I will move to new digs somewhere that are not at the end of the  world. While Muizenberg is beautiful in terms of its position on the edge of the Indian Ocean, it is rapidly decaying and becoming grottier every day, with more and more riff-raff walking the streets and the relatively safe feeling I had when I first moved here nearly evaporated now...

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* Triple S - a favorite expression of my friend Steve's - stands for morning ablutions a/k/a "shit shower and shave"